Pasture Cropping
Did you know...
Grasses and trees are both able to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere. Trees retain it in their timber and grasses send it through to the soil through their leaf matter and roots. Both methods of sequestration have different qualities. MorePasture Cropping, which is a technique of planting crops directly into established pasture, was first conceived in Australia some 6 years ago and has only started to become more prominent since 2005.
The four primary principles of pasture cropping are to:
1) Protect perenniality of pastures
2) Work with nature, not fight her.
3) Create edge effect between the root systems for mutual benefits.
4) Control of time both during the cropping phase and the grazing phase.
Pasture cropping can help confront modern agriculture’s natural resource management challenges in the following ways:
• Resolving declining fertility and soil health issues by allowing soil biota and root mass to exist and flourish all year round;
• Eliminating compaction by a living, healthy, dynamic and permanent root mass;
• Eliminating herbicide resistance by removing the need for herbicide;
• Reversing salinity by holding all available moisture in the active root zone and therefore eliminating leakage;
• Encouraging biodiversity instead of the current realisation of deserts and monocultures;
• Weeds are less invasive because of the presence of perennial pasture;
• Decreasing acidification because the farm is not solely reliant on legume pastures.
The four primary principles of pasture cropping are to:
1) Protect perenniality of pastures
2) Work with nature, not fight her.
3) Create edge effect between the root systems for mutual benefits.
4) Control of time both during the cropping phase and the grazing phase.
Pasture cropping can help confront modern agriculture’s natural resource management challenges in the following ways:
• Resolving declining fertility and soil health issues by allowing soil biota and root mass to exist and flourish all year round;
• Eliminating compaction by a living, healthy, dynamic and permanent root mass;
• Eliminating herbicide resistance by removing the need for herbicide;
• Reversing salinity by holding all available moisture in the active root zone and therefore eliminating leakage;
• Encouraging biodiversity instead of the current realisation of deserts and monocultures;
• Weeds are less invasive because of the presence of perennial pasture;
• Decreasing acidification because the farm is not solely reliant on legume pastures.
